With stories and advice from a fleet of trusted experts, this book is for anyone wishing to get their business off the ground and become the next wildly successful entrepreneur everyone is reading about. For decades, makers, doers, and dreamers have turned to Inc. for help in getting their businesses off the ground. The insanely successful entrepreneurs behind organizations like Skullcandy, Spanx, Elon Musk, and Airbnb learned lessons at every stage, experienced unexpected setbacks, and in the end triumphed wildly. All along, Inc. was there capturing it all so that others could experience even greater successes than these titans of business. From brainstorming to crowdfunding to building partnerships, the book walks new and aspiring founders through seven crucial stages, including: Establishing a brilliant business idea Selecting the best structure and strategy for your startup Getting the word out and building clientele Preparing to go global Learn how Elon Musk stays wildly productive. Discover how Sarah Blakely got the inspiration for Spanx. Read the stories of how a hashtag accelerated Airbnb’s success and how Warby Parker shook up the eyewear industry with its innovative, socially conscious business model. Start a Successful Business gathers these important lessons into a single path-charting guide.
Work for yourself in just one week with Britain's most dynamic entrepreneur 'Everybody wants to be an entrepreneur. Every single day of my life I am bombarded by people with pitches. But 90% of new businesses fail, because their founders failed to ask themselves the simplest of questions. I can save you years of wasted time and thousands of pounds of wasted money by giving you the ammunition to ask the right questions, and helping you make the decision that is right for you. I will show you how to spend a maximum of seven days deciding if your idea is workable and bankable. How to say 'I'm in', but equally importantly, to have the courage to say 'I'm out'. How to become your own Dragon. Each piece of advice in this book is based on my thirty years of starting businesses. You will find all the fundamental ingredients for any new company, whatever sector you want to be in, whatever size of business you have in mind, along with the tools to make it work. Answer all the tough questions I am going to get you to ask yourself and you will have a business that genuinely has a chance of success. You can be one of the 10% of businesses that do make it.' - James Caan. James Caan is one of the UK's most successful and dynamic entrepreneurs, having built and sold businesses since 1985. After dropping out of school at sixteen and starting his first business in a Pall Mall broom cupboard - armed with little more than charm and his father's advice - Caan went on to make his fortune in the recruitment industry, founding the Alexander Mann Group, a company with a turnover of £130m. A 2003 graduate of Harvard Business School, Caan's most recent endeavour has been to set up private equity firm Hamilton Bradshaw. Caan hit our screens when he joined the panel of the BBC's Dragons' Den in 2007. He is a regular in the national and business press, advises on various Government programmes, and initiates numerous philanthropic projects via the James Caan Foundation.
Examines the traits that define most people who achieve success, heart, smarts, guts, and luck, and helps readers to determine which traits they possess.
Now in a newly updated and expanded 3rd edition, SBP30 is a concise, reader-friendly guide that contains all the information needed to craft a comprehensive business plan for any type of entrepreneurial activity within a 30-day time frame. It provides step-by-step procedures as well as hundreds of company startup and operating strategies. There is even a section showing readers how to create a mini- one day business plan in a single afternoon to give any current ideas they have a needed focus when time is of essence. Revised with international readers in mind, this 3rd edition also offers more than 200 educational and motivational quotations as well as 33 profit tips and 11 entrepreneurial success stories from around the globe. Enhanced with more than 100 time-saving checklists and worksheets, a sample business plan, and over 150 newly added sample paragraphs to help readers with the language of business, this guide is a key ingredient for anyone interested in planning a business.
The Wall Street Journal Bestseller featured in Bloomberg, Fast Company, Masters of Scale, the Motley Fool, Marketplace and more. An indispensable guide to building a startup and breaking down the barriers for diverse entrepreneurs from the visionary venture capitalist and pioneering entrepreneur Kathryn Finney. Build the Damn Thing is a hard-won, battle-tested guide for every entrepreneur who the establishment has left out. Finney, an investor and startup champion, explains how to build a business from the ground up, from developing a business plan to finding investors, growing a team, and refining a product. Finney empowers entrepreneurs to take advantage of their unique networks and resources; arms readers with responses to investors who say, “great pitch but I just don’t do Black women”; and inspires them to overcome naysayers while remaining “100% That B*tch.” Don’t wait for the system to let you in—break down the door and build your damn thing. For all the Builders striving to build their businesses in a world that has overlooked and underestimated them: this is the essential guide to knowing, breaking, remaking and building your own rules of entrepreneurship in a startup and investing world designed for and by the “Entitleds.”
This comprehensive step-by-step guide takes you through the critical business planning issues of company strategy: What's your Identity? Marketing issues: Who are the buyers? Product/Service issues: What are you selling? Sales and promotion issues: How do you sell? and financial issues: How are you doing?
The Everything Start Your Own Business Book, 2nd Edition has everything you need to start your own business-and keep it running in the black. Completely updated and expertly revised by successful businesswoman Judith B. Harrington, this one-stop resource contains new information on: Online business strategy Critical professional associations and organizations Regulatory pitfalls Competitive concepts such as leased employees Being your own boss, head cook, and bottle washer isn't easy-one in three new businesses fail the first year. With this straightforward, no-nonsense reference book, you can make sure your business succeeds. Whether you need help formulating a business plan, finding financing, or running the business once it's off the ground, you'll find it all in The Everything Start Your Own Business Book, 2nd Edition.
If you want your startup to succeed, you need to understand why startups fail. “Whether you’re a first-time founder or looking to bring innovation into a corporate environment, Why Startups Fail is essential reading.”—Eric Ries, founder and CEO, LTSE, and New York Times bestselling author of The Lean Startup and The Startup Way Why do startups fail? That question caught Harvard Business School professor Tom Eisenmann by surprise when he realized he couldn’t answer it. So he launched a multiyear research project to find out. In Why Startups Fail, Eisenmann reveals his findings: six distinct patterns that account for the vast majority of startup failures. • Bad Bedfellows. Startup success is thought to rest largely on the founder’s talents and instincts. But the wrong team, investors, or partners can sink a venture just as quickly. • False Starts. In following the oft-cited advice to “fail fast” and to “launch before you’re ready,” founders risk wasting time and capital on the wrong solutions. • False Promises. Success with early adopters can be misleading and give founders unwarranted confidence to expand. • Speed Traps. Despite the pressure to “get big fast,” hypergrowth can spell disaster for even the most promising ventures. • Help Wanted. Rapidly scaling startups need lots of capital and talent, but they can make mistakes that leave them suddenly in short supply of both. • Cascading Miracles. Silicon Valley exhorts entrepreneurs to dream big. But the bigger the vision, the more things that can go wrong. Drawing on fascinating stories of ventures that failed to fulfill their early promise—from a home-furnishings retailer to a concierge dog-walking service, from a dating app to the inventor of a sophisticated social robot, from a fashion brand to a startup deploying a vast network of charging stations for electric vehicles—Eisenmann offers frameworks for detecting when a venture is vulnerable to these patterns, along with a wealth of strategies and tactics for avoiding them. A must-read for founders at any stage of their entrepreneurial journey, Why Startups Fail is not merely a guide to preventing failure but also a roadmap charting the path to startup success.
Ditch your 9-5 and join the ever-growing army of prosperous business owners... Do you hate your day job and find yourself staring relentlessly at the clock every day, counting down the minutes to when you can finally go home? Do you have a genius business idea that you are passionate about turning into a reality, yet don't know a single thing about owning a business, let alone starting one? Are you in search of a new adventure? Are you in search of a new adventure, a new phase of your life where you become the boss, and make decisions according to your own visions? With how repetitive work life can get, it's difficult not to fantasize about how life would be like if you didn't have to wake up at 6 am every morning, drive to work, and be someone's puppet for an entire day. What if you were told that that dream didn't have to be a figment of your imagination, but a reality? Your reality. No matter how many businesses pop up around the world, there will always be room for new ones to emerge. In this forever-evolving modern world, new ideas are always welcome. So, the question is: What life-changing ideas will you bring to the market? In This Book, you will discover: Step-by-step instructions on how to launch your own business in just 30 days without prior experience A checklist for each step of the way, guiding you along your journey and making sure you have all your ducks in a row before proceeding onwards to your next move The 8 key skills you must adapt in order to become a successful entrepreneur and achieve the unthinkable How to gain loyal customers all while staying true to your morals which will have them supporting you until the end of time The one step you cannot skip, or else it may prove to be the demise of your business Why your employees' mindsets could make or break your business, as well as how to mold them into one like-minded team The secret to mastering salesmanship without years of training--say goodbye to using sleazy sales techniques no one enjoys falling victim to And much more. If you're an absolute business novice and don't know the first thing about what it takes to launch your own startup, then don't worry, even you can follow along. With straightforward guidance, clear instructions, and a checklist to assist you every step of the way, becoming a business owner is not far from your reach. You need not have saved up loads of cash over the past few years either, as funding a business is not as black-and-white as you may think. There are plenty of ways to find the money you need in order to finance your situation according to your level of comfort and the amount required, all of which will be covered. If you have a business idea you know there will be customers for, don't keep waiting around! You need to get on track to construct the business of your dreams before someone else beats you to it. And if millionaire Fraser Doherty, the founder of Super Jam, was able to start his own business at the young age of 14, then so can you. The possibilities are endless! It's just up to you to take the initiative... If you want to discover how you can become your own boss and lead the business of your dreams, then take the opportunity now!
